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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25112833">Begin Again</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainodonewithyou/pseuds/captainodonewithyou'>captainodonewithyou</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Daisy/Sousa, Drabble, F/M, Oneshot, Sousy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:00:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,970</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25112833</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainodonewithyou/pseuds/captainodonewithyou</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little baby bit about new beginnings.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>156</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Begin Again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She thinks about Lincoln sometimes, but it is far from anything happy, or romantic, or nostalgic.  She thinks mostly about the empty gravesite.  About the call she had to make to his family, and about standing behind a distant tree as his father, and his mother, and his older sister (she never knew he had a sister.  She never knew his mothers name) watched the empty casket lowered into the ground.  She thinks even more often of his body.  If any of it survived.  If things decompose in space, like they do on earth.  </p><p>She has a reoccurring nightmare, that she wakes up in his arms.  She knows it is him because he always buzzes, just slightly.  No one but she could sense it — he thought it was because of her ability to control molecular structure.  She usually tuned out when he tried to reason through it all for her — a bit too much science for her taste.  Regardless, she can feel his buzzing body curled around her spine, his arms wrapped lightly around her middle, his fingers tangled through hers.</p><p>Calling it a nightmare is perhaps overkill, as that is all it is.  She, in her bed, tangled up in him.  Warm, safe, and home.</p><p>The nightmare is when she wakes up alone.</p><p>In fact, most all of her worst nightmares have been the waking.  It was better, for a while, when she joined the team.  When she could wake up in her little cot and know Fitz was right next door, that Jemma was just a bit down the way.  </p><p>It is a silly fear she learned in foster care — that even if the adults want to comfort you, when you wake screaming in terror, they won’t be there forever.  They may not even be there twice.  That people do not reliably come for you, when you scream, when you are vulnerable.  That it is better not to expect them to at all.  And she is okay with that.  It has made her strong.  </p><p>She still feels it, a wrenching ache in the hollow of her gut, every time she wakes up alone.  Her aloneness is an affirmation, a ritual sacrifice to her own strength — or she tells herself so, anyway.  </p><p>It was hard to get used to waking up with Lincoln.  It wasn’t that she hadn’t woken up with other people before him.  But it was different, with him.  She knew right from the beginning that he loved her.  She even knew, without acknowledging the sheer danger of it, that he would do anything for her.  Lincoln was <em>hers, </em>in a way no one had been before.  He would be there through every nightmare.</p><p>Then he wasn’t, and the cocoon of safe, warm, home that they built in her bed crumbled away, piece by piece.  All that remains is her memory of his skin against hers, and the way wakefulness tears him from her, and now more than ever before she thinks whatever fates there are out there, prefer her alone.  </p><p>These are all things that race through her mind as sleep, that constant nemesis, holds her just on the edge of utter helplessness as Malick and his goons circle her with needles and scalpels and worse.  She gets flashes of the doctor, and as she balances on the edge of consciousness, she feels Lincoln there, holding her.  And gone.  There, and gone.  And the doctor, at the edge of her vision, isn’t the doctor at all - but Fitz, and then even he is gone, too.  Jiaying peers over Malick’s shoulder with disappointment, a “didn’t I warn you?” clear on the tip of her tongue.  </p><p>She knows there is no way out of this.  Her powers are muffled in her core — she is numb and lightheaded and can’t even find an edge of strength to grasp to, to tear them up out of her.</p><p>The room and the uninvited guests in it are starting to spin, now, and all she can do is squeeze her eyes closed tight and wait for the movement to stop.  It doesn’t and she drops her head sideways, pressing her hot cheek into the ice cold table.  It grounds her, and she inhales slow and deep, savoring the momentary stillness, even if pain crowns in her spine.  Pain is real and manageable and physical.  She needs physical.  She needs real.</p><p>But the table where she has pressed her cheek is warming, and her body isn’t her ally right now— longing to give into the addling drugs to relieve the pain.  The wall is just beginning to move when she catches the slightest glimpse of something soft and brown peering at her.  Then, the wall blinks, and all of a sudden the picture becomes clear.  Sousa is behind it.  He is there.  He is keeping an eye on her.  </p><p>All she can see is that warm brown eye, but when he catches her looking, the wild concern melts into something softer, something that feels like him coming up behind her and pressing his hand firm and polite to the small of her back as he shot the (shockingly, less psychotic) Malick brother the most piercing of warning glares.  He is feet away, but she is wide awake and she feels his drive still intact.  She feels the ghost of his steady hand against her back.</p><p>She feels Sousa’s presence there even as the drugs wash her back out into unconsciousness.</p><p>Then someone is smoothing her hair, and her head isn’t pressing uncomfortably against cold metal anymore.  Sousa is talking to her— she can feel his voice vibrating in the pit of his stomach, near where she is pressed up against him.  She is having some trouble processing his words — her head is too muddled.  But his fingertips just keep stroking her hair from her face, gentle and soothing and constant, comfort and warmth thwarted only just by the steel handcuffs at his wrists, rattling in her ear.</p><p>A sob threatens to tear through her at the ease and insistence of the touch.  At how desperately she wants to tell him to stop, to run, to get as far away from her as possible.  That things that hold onto her get broken.  </p><p>“Stay awake,” he coaxes her, and he leans in a bit as his jangling hands travel down her spine, barely there, brushing over a particular white hot core of pain mid-back.  She can feel blood seeping from under the half-assed bandage slapped over the intrusion, creeping down her waist and certainly seeping into her shirt.  And he lays there, just a moment, close enough she can feel the heat off of his body, his deep words still reverberating against her.</p><p>He says the same thing again, she thinks, but all she really hears is a pleading, “stay.”</p><p>She hears herself in the word.</p><p>But he seems to decide against holding any pressure to the sensitive spot on her back, hesitating just barely before his fingers are back in her hair.  He has her blood on his fingertips now, and she feels the red trail he leaves on her forehead.</p><p>“We’re going home,” she makes out as he cradles her head now, definite and insistent.  “But you have got to fight.”</p><p>His grip is something fierce, and his thumb is calloused.  The callousing of his thumb is so rough that it scrapes along her forehead as he strokes her hair.  She is going to introduce him to lotion, when they get out of here.  She lets the hum of his voice wash over her and engulf her, breathes in and out with the gentle, insistent tempo of his fingers  — keeping her awake.  Assuring her he hasn’t left.</p><p>She clenches her fists, reaching inside of herself as piercing pain shoots up her arm.  She hasn’t been silenced, exactly.  Muffled is a better description.  When she breathes in slow and deep, she can still feel the barest hum of her powers at her core.  It is a smoldering coal in an ice-land, and there is nothing to let it catch on to.  Nothing to encourage herself to burn.</p><p>It is burning, after all, this thing she is.  Time has made it better, has given her greater control at least.  But control requires focus, and focus requires energy, and with no energy, with all the synapses in her nerves dulled and tangled, she can’t pull it out of her.  She can’t coax the powers to life.</p><p>She lifts her arm with all the energy she has left, instead.  Opens her palm, wet and warm with her own blood.  He stops stroking her hair to pry the glass from where it has embedded into her skin without hesitation or preamble — and that is more comforting even than his hands in her hair.</p><p>When she wakes up on the Zephyr, the first thing she sees is Sousa.</p><p>“Thought you were staying in the 70’s,” she tries to tease, but her heart isn’t quite in it.  The hard surface she is laying on makes her uneasy, draws her back to Malick’s barn.  She can feel her powers tingling beneath her skin now, at least. “If you thought they were bad, you really shouldn’t see the 2010’s.”</p><p>He smiles crookedly, but she can see the barn in the darkened edges of his gaze still, too.</p><p>“Tried on some of those…. floppy bottom jeans.  Looked in a mirror.  Never got on a plane faster than I did trying to get away from ‘em.”</p><p>“I feel like it is probably a bad time to tell you about skinny jeans, then.”</p><p>His brow furrows and his head cocks ever so slightly, in a look of confusion that makes her grin.  Momentarily, an image of him in well fitted jeans does cross her mind, and… that is less funny, so much less funny that she can’t help but bite her lip.  Just barely.</p><p>She has been so distracted by him that her pains are only beginning to catch up with her now.  She is still distracted enough not to care too intensely, but he mistakes the change in her expression for pain, and concern creases into his brow.  He reaches for a nearby crutch — not his own, though.  A fuzzy memory of him carrying her suddenly snaps into focus and her cheeks burn.  He moves stiffly.  </p><p>“Agent Simmons said she had some painkillers,” he mutters hurriedly, “to get her when you woke.  I can —“</p><p>“No, don’t,” she says, too quickly, as he pivots slightly for the door.  He stops immediately short, glancing back over his shoulder at her.  She swallows, taking her next words more slowly. “I… just am not excited about getting any more drugs pumped into me right now.”</p><p>He doesn’t push her.  Doesn’t question her.  He is still a moment anyway, just staring back at her.  It is understanding there, hovering between them.  He still doesn’t move.</p><p>“I should tell her you’re awake,” he finally says with finality, but he doesn’t move.  He is waiting for her approval.</p><p>She doesn’t want him to go.</p><p>“Don’t,” she repeats. “Please. Stay.  I want you to stay with me.”</p><p>(He stiffly moves his chair closer to the head of her bed and asks her about skinny jeans.  She tells him they are made to make asses look good, and he only looks scandalized for the briefest flicker of a moment, before he laughs warm and full.</p><p>She falls asleep talking to him, her body still taxed and worn.</p><p>There are warm fingers tangled in her own as she drifts back to consciousness, and she braces herself for cold to overcome her, as reality strips him away.</p><p>When her eyes blink open, Sousa has drifted into what looks like a very uncomfortable sleep in the seat beside her.  His calloused fingers are woven through hers.)</p>
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